If I Were to Start Again
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If I Were to Start Again
By a Guy Who’s Seen a Few Things
You never really forget the first one.
The first sling — smaller than the nail on your pinky. The first time you try to coax it into a deli cup without losing your cool, or your lunch. The first time it disappears for three weeks and you wonder if you’ve murdered a thing you’ve never really touched.
If I had to start again — knowing what I know now — I’d still screw things up. But the screw-ups would have purpose. They’d be controlled burns instead of five-alarm disasters.
1. The Tools — No Romance, Just Necessity
Here’s the truth: most of the “starter kits” are garbage dressed up in shrink wrap. You don’t need fifteen pieces of acrylic junk or a tweezer set that looks like it belongs in a dental office.
You need long stainless-steel tongs, the kind that don’t bend when you hit compacted substrate.
A catch cup big enough to be forgiving — not the flimsy takeout container you think will “probably work.”
A water dish that isn’t so deep a sling could drown in it.
A soft paintbrush for nudging, not stabbing.
And a thermometer/hygrometer that tells you what’s happening, not what you hope is happening.
One is none. Two is one. If it matters and you only have one, you’re one bad drop away from improvising in a panic — and panic is where mistakes breed.
2. The People Worth Listening To
Everybody talks. Not everybody’s worth hearing.
The hobby is full of copy-paste husbandry and overconfident half-truths. You want the voices that have done it, screwed it up, and had the humility to learn from it.
Tom Moran’s Big Spiders — methodical, no-nonsense.
Dave’s Little Beasties — detailed, patient, quietly confident.
Tarantula Kat — approachable, a little more flair, good for seeing the hobby through a friendlier lens.
But don’t take my list and laminate it. Don’t take anyone’s list as gospel. Use these people as guideposts, not commandments. Learn to separate charisma from credibility.
3. The Box You Put It In
The enclosure is the house and the neighborhood. Get it wrong and you’ve set your animal up for failure before you’ve even started.
Too big? Your spider may vanish into the farthest corner, a ghost you catch on camera once a month. Too small? You’ve built a prison cell.
And don’t just slap it together the day you bring them home. The enclosure should be ready before the spider’s even in the car. Hide in place. Water ready. Substrate compacted or loose depending on the species.
Remember: slow is fast, and fast is slow.
I’ve seen keepers rush a rehouse and end up on their knees with a flashlight at 2 a.m., tearing apart the room because they “thought they had it under control.”
4. The First Focus
When you’re new, everything is a shiny lure. You want one of each, every color, every temperament. You want the story of owning more than you want the experience of keeping.
Don’t.
Pick one or two species that won’t punish you for your ignorance. Watch them. Really watch them. See how they eat, how they web, how they disappear into pre-molt. You’ll learn more from a month of observation than from a week of binge-watching care videos.
5. The Kind of Keeper You Are
You might be a Collector — chasing the satisfaction of a full shelf, your room a living museum of eight-legged artifacts.
An Observer — content to spend hours just watching a single tarantula slowly seal itself inside a webbed hide.
Or a Seeker of the Rare — hunting down the obscure locale variant or the species that only comes in once every few years.
There’s no wrong answer, but knowing which one you are will save you money, time, and the headache of building a collection that doesn’t actually make you happy.
6. The Questions You Should Ask Yourself
This is the part nobody tells you because it’s not sexy. It doesn’t make for good clickbait. But it’s the thing that will separate you from the keepers who burn out after six months.
What do I want to see every day?
What feeling do I want to create when I look at my enclosures?
What kind of experience am I actually chasing?
What do I want to accomplish as a keeper?
What will I do when my goals change — because they will?
How far down the rabbit hole do I actually want to go?
If I were to start again, I’d remember this above everything:
Form follows function. A setup can be gorgeous, but if it doesn’t work for the animal, it’s a failure.
It’s not about “winning” the hobby or impressing strangers online. It’s about building something that works — and if it happens to look good doing it, that’s just gravy.
7. Finding Your Place, Then Finding Your Pace
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you — the real freedom comes after you stop proving yourself.
Once you know your lane, you can set your own speed. This is where you get to stretch. This is where you get to be weird in the best way.
Want a dozen different tweezers, each with its own specific job? Go for it. You’ve earned the right to obsess.
Want a custom enclosure that looks like it belongs in a museum exhibit? Fine — because now you understand the animal comes first, the aesthetics second.
Want to keep a species that would’ve eaten your lunch if you’d tried it six months in? You’ll know when you’re ready — and you’ll approach it with respect, not bravado.
Finding your place means you stop chasing validation. Finding your pace means you start chasing refinement.
You’re no longer just “a person with spiders.” You’re a curator — building something intentional, something that says this is how I do it without needing to shout it.
The rest is just you, the spider, and the long, slow rhythm of two living things figuring out how to share space without misunderstanding each other.